Recently it has been possible to commercially purchase a motorized power unit which can be coupled to a conventional occupant-propelled wheel chair, to motorize the chair when desired. Normally these attachable, drive units comprise a front wheel, driven by an electric motor which is supported within a housing which further supports a battery for supplying the necessary electrical current to the electric motor. A typical such powered unit is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,503,925, and other examples of such units are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,921,744.
Because conventional wheelchairs are bulky, it is not possible to easily transport them in even the larger automobiles. Even when the wheelchair is of the foldable type, and can be placed in the vehicle trunk, it leaves practically no room in the trunk for anything else, and the motorized drive unit needs to be separately transported in the automotive vehicle.
The present invention relates to personal vehicles, particularly for patients and others who have some physical disability, but are sufficiently physically active to be able to assemble and disassemble a demountable sulky, and transfer the components to and from a vehicle trunk.
Heretofore, no seat-bearing vehicle, which could be broken down into compact component pieces to facilitate ready storage in an automobile trunk, which necessarily carried other items such as baggage to be used on a trip of several days, has been commercially available. One of the prime reasons is believed to have been the lack of a safe and rigid latch system which could be engaged and disengaged by hand without the use of tools. Latching systems of various types have been proposed for various vehicles, and are disclosed, for instance, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,452,327 and 4,203,612, but none of these demountable vehicular latch constructions satisfy all the necessary criteria.